Video Transcript
Michael is two years old. Benjamin is one year older than
Michael. Madison is five years older than
Benjamin. How old is Madison?
In this word problem, we’re asked
to find the age of Madison. And if we read the word problem
carefully, we can see a fact that will help us. We’re told Madison is five years
older than Benjamin. But how old is Benjamin? If we look back through the word
problem, we can find another fact that can help us. Benjamin is one year older than
Michael. But wait a moment, how old’s
Michael? To find the answer, we’re gonna
have to go all the way back to the beginning. We’ll start with Michael’s age, and
we’re going to find out everybody else’s age along the way.
So, let’s start with Michael. We’re told that he’s two years
old. Let’s put a counter on our number
track to show Michael’s age. In our next fact, we’re told that
Benjamin is one year older than Michael. In other words, if we take
Michael’s age, which is two, and we add one more year to it, then we can find
Benjamin’s age. Two plus one equals what?
To find the answer, we could count
on one from Michael’s age on our number track. We just need to move our counter
one place. Two plus one equals three. So now we know Benjamin’s age; he’s
three years old. And now we can solve our final fact
because we’re told that Madison is five years older than Benjamin. Now we’ve just worked out, haven’t
we, that Benjamin is three years old.
So we know Benjamin’s age. And we know that Madison is five
years older than this. So if we add five and three
together, this will give us Madison’s age. Three plus five equals what? Let’s count on five more using our
number track. One, two, three, four, five. We’ve reached the number eight. Three plus five equals eight.
We’ve used two additions to solve
this problem. Two plus one gave us Benjamin’s
age, which is three. And then we took this answer,
three, and we added five to it to find Madison’s age. Three plus five equals eight. And that’s how we know Madison is
eight years old.
